grok

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

transitive v. Slang To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

v. To have or to have acquired an intuitive understanding of; to know (something) without having to think (such as knowing the number of objects in a collection without needing to count them: see subitize).

v. To fully and completely understand something in all its details and intricacies.

Etymologies

Coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his Stranger in a Strange Land.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) in which the word is described as being from the word for “to drink” and, figuratively, “to drink in all available aspects of reality”, “to become one with the observed” in Heinlein’s fictitious Martian language. (Wiktionary)

Examples

For those of you who read Robert Heinlein, you will realize that I stole the term grok from his novel, Strangers In A Strange Land, which was practically required reading for hippies.

I actually think that this is part of the secret of our success -- we write headlines like wire-service stringers, headlines that are meant to be easy to grok from a cluster of RSS links, search-results, and so on.

I might agree somewhat with whatever it is that you are trying to say if I could understand what it is you are trying to say, but unless you can fill out your thoughts into a cogent paragraph, I won't be able to 'grok' your thoughts.

"It was far too busy, as always; for years there had been fender-benders at this intersection, mostly caused by people who simply couldn't grok the idea of a four-way stop where everybody took turns, and just went bashing through instead."- 'The Dark Half', Stephen King.